Southern Hemisphere lag issues

Hi Devs,

Tonight I ran a Titan EX for the first time, only to find that my latency was stuck at s:0 r:2800+ for a majority of each attempt, and by this point I was already dead.

After discussing it with the party (who were wondering why I kept getting hit with all five weights of the earth despite my best efforts) it came out that there is an issue with ALL Australians and players in the southern hemisphere in regards to lag. It was further discussed that this issue has existed since 2.1, which sounds to me like a problem intentionally left alone.

Is this true, and more importantly, what is being done to ease it? I know lag is an issue for all real-time online games, but this is way beyond a joke.

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Originally Posted by Zebyxus

Hi Devs,

Tonight I ran a Titan EX for the first time, only to find that my latency was stuck at s:0 r:2800+ for a majority of each attempt, and by this point I was already dead.

After discussing it with the party (who were wondering why I kept getting hit with all five weights of the earth despite my best efforts) it came out that there is an issue with ALL Australians and players in the southern hemisphere in regards to lag. It was further discussed that this issue has existed since 2.1, which sounds to me like a problem intentionally left alone.

Is this true, and more importantly, what is being done to ease it? I know lag is an issue for all real-time online games, but this is way beyond a joke.

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Wow I can't believe this problem exists since 2.1
Also have the same problem now, I didn't experienced this problem before. My problem started 1st week of August until now. Last June-July my connection was very good, but now wtf!

And FYI I already contacted SE and they said "go to portforward.com" to solve the issue.
BEFORE I don't need to forward ports to play smoothly. But now, why?
By the way, you need to pay for this portforward.com thing

The problem now is I don't have access to our routers because it is a restricted area in our compound.

Nonsense

check your latency with proper tools, mine sits between 200 and 320 for the most part and lag is only an issue occasionally.

those numbers aren't your latency, that's bytes sent/received.

TATA was having issues the last couple days... as such my ISP has switched me to going through Atlanta for a while, putting me on Cogent lines to get me across the US and into Canada. It's much cleaner now. Level 3 has been having issues lately too. All three of them have hiccups off and on, making it a moving target. But if you work with your ISP, they can help reduce the impact considerably, at times even skirt around it for a few weeks at a time.

It's an ongoing issue with the ISP's in the US. Peering/transit agreements are just not set up to efficiently manage the congestion. You need to collect data on your route (tracert and such) and forward the samples to your ISP's tier3 people so they can escalate the matter to people that can address your routing issues.

This can and DOES work if the issue is in fact in between you and Ormuco (SE's ISP). Been doing it since Beta4. My routing changes on average every 3 weeks trying to stay ahead of the curve. The only time I've been denied access was during server level outages that SE publicly announced and addressed. Otherwise, there have been the high queue times at login (because too many people getting on at once, but haven't seen that in MONTHS), or the random short-term disconnects caused by issues in route. Such disconnects typically resolve quickly. Often just need to log back in a few minutes later (mostly I just log back in once the server logs me out, but sometimes my modem reboots on it's own or I have to contact Tier3 support about it, then reboot).

In my case atleast, what i posted was my latency (as reported by Resource monitor)

Op, watch the boss skill bar, not the AOE markers.

http://i.imgur.com/5pk8gJw.jpg

Solution? Play wow, they care about their paying customers from AU/NZ

Well I had thought this post to be lost with everyone else's concerns, but I guess not.

@ Squa11_Leonhart: I highly doubt that anyone is going to stop mid-fight to check their latency with ping tests or other diagnostic tools they may have, whether out of concern of further taxing their system or worry that they might not be completely ready for everything to catch up when/if it does (and not just boot). Boss skill bars fly past, I barely notice them before reacting. This may just be an issue with systems and compatibility, but that's a completely different conversation.

@ Raist: Cheers for that, not sure what to make of it, but I'm sure SE's brains trust will put that info to good use.

@ Jaykos: I do play WoW, the difference in latency ratings was phenomenal when Blizz opened up servers in Sydney

Further info: I am now getting random times where my Send and Receive ratings are stuck at 0 for periods of time, and these periods result in one of two outcomes, either I have to wait another three or so minutes while the system I'm on (PS4 or PC) has a minor stroke trying to process the mass of incoming data (Receive rate has peaked at over 20k in one of the most recent episodes), or I am simply slapped with a 90K disconnection error, most likely leading to a 2002 Lobby Server Error requiring a full re-log.

I am currently also speaking with my ISP to ensure they aren't accidentally throttling my connection due to a false categorisation of the game client as P2P software

As I said before, lag is a constant issue, but when it begins to impact on a player's ability to do end game content (EX Primals, Coil) it becomes a problem in dire need of addressing. Any advice or tips not already covered would be greatly appreciated. (Yes, I'm expecting you, trolls)

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Originally Posted by Zebyxus

@ Squa11_Leonhart: I highly doubt that anyone is going to stop mid-fight to check their latency with ping tests or other diagnostic tools they may have, whether out of concern of further taxing their system or worry that they might not be completely ready for everything to catch up when/if it does (and not just boot). Boss skill bars fly past, I barely notice them before reacting. This may just be an issue with systems and compatibility, but that's a completely different conversation

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I do quite often if i notice things not being instant.

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Originally Posted by Jaykos

http://i.imgur.com/5pk8gJw.jpg

Solution? Play wow, they care about their paying customers from AU/NZ

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Yeah if playing by yourself is fun.

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Originally Posted by Akary

Yeah if playing by yourself is fun.

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It is for a bit, then you start wondering why you're cursed with no friends in the game :P

Anyway, my ISP has confirmed they don't throttle or 'shape' my data rates until I've hit my cap, which for most months I come nowhere near hitting.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Zebyxus

It is for a bit, then you start wondering why you're cursed with no friends in the game :P

Anyway, my ISP has confirmed they don't throttle or 'shape' my data rates until I've hit my cap, which for most months I come nowhere near hitting.

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Your rate may not be throttled down... but all internet traffic is shaped. All the time. It's a necessary function for congestion control. Certain types of traffic are assigned a priority index, and when utilization reaches a certain point (or the transfer protocol detects congestion), packets may get delayed or in worse-case scenarios dropped (and hopefully retransmitted--depends on the protocols in use).

That is where we are seeing so many issues. Segments are getting overloaded or other problems are causing bottlenecks along the path to the server, and congestion controls are kicking in. If the game's packets are not flagged the proper priority level (either an error on SE's end, or an issue with an ISP's policy--be that ours or one of their routing partners), then they may be delayed or dropped. If the congestion controls are not able to stem off the rising tide and utilization gets too high, then we run into a hard limit of the hardware and suffer the effects of congestion failure. Sometimes there is a quick recovery of the conditions, sometimes it takes days or even weeks depending on how bad it is along that route and how quick the admins are made aware of the problem and how long it takes for them to implement changes (if they even do anything at all).

Whichever the scenario may be (SE not flagging packets properly, an ISP failing to assign proper priority, or other policy/hardware failure to mitigate congestion), there are things our ISP can do to at least reduce the impact. They can revisit peering/transit agreements to increase throughput through troubled regions, adjust routing policies to avoid the troubled areas, or (like O2/Orange did for it's UK customers last year) work with a content provider to craft a custom solution specifically for their traffic to assign a higher priority to their packets in general. Comcast, by the way, was doing the opposite last year and was choking some popular streaming services to preserve bandwidth--but they got caught by Level3 and shamed for it and had to back off on it. The incident is a big driving point in the Net Neutrality debate.

So, in summation: Your traffic is indeed getting shaped--just not in the sense that so many think about it (throttling for torrents and such). There are steps a last-mile ISP can take to get around congested paths once such paths have been properly identified. But, it will take putting pressure on their Tier3 support to make it happen. While it should not be necessary, collecting data on your particular sessions (tracerts and such to both your game servers and other services for a comparison, possibly even some modem signal and event log reports as well in case there are signalling issues locally that need attention) will go a long way towards demonstrating your issues and help you put pressure on them to take action. It may not feel right, but sometimes you have to go the extra step and go after them on their forums/twitter/facebook in order to get the attention of the right person to affect the needed changes--but there IS someone within their organization that can look into such matters and escalate it to a solution of some sort.

Raist, your wisdom is an ever welcome sight.

I do agree that there is throttling occurring, but I have a feeling that it's occurring outside of my country's jurisdiction and as such will have little hope of getting it rectified. Since making my last post I have not only re-contacted my ISP, but the service provider they supply from and both companies have basically said "Well that's nice, nothing we can do/it's not our fault, have a nice day". I am highly tempted to believe that they are just lying to cover an inadequacy or error within their systems, but I also believe that they are not genuinely at fault.

I have been noticing lately that the high-latency periods are falling into line with server congestion, which no one can do much about really but it is becoming even more annoying where latency prevents me from partaking in events such as the hunt or duties as I can't guarantee I'll be able to remain connected to see it complete.

My thought process on the matter has been exhausted, here's hoping that something happens to ease the pain.

Six months later and the situation seems to have gotten worse. The lag spikes are worse as they result in more frequent disconnections, and they are now happening daily. Trace routes performed during these 'sessions' are showing that the lag is flowing back from SE's servers so I'm putting in a ticket with support to see if anything can be done. If someone who works for SE could at least give some info on what, if anything, is happening to fix this, I would be most appreciative.

Been having the same lag issues for a while now as well. I'm on the East Coast in USA, (Behemoth) and connect to the SE server in Montreal. You'd think I'd be close enough to it, but during peak gaming times, usually around 7-8pm EST, I get significant packet loss and lag.

Tracing the packets, it seems there is one server somewhere after NYC, that keeps dropping packets. So one of my last hops that travels to that server keeps giving me lag in the game. I hope that I don't have to mention that it's really annoying...

I use Verizon FIOS and after contacting my ISP, they said there is nothing they can do personally. So I really hope Square can get things sorted out with that bad hop that seems to be tripping many East Coast players up.

Thanks,
V.